Tuesday, 27th November, 2007

Wednesday, 28th November, 2007

Thursday 29th November, 2007

Abstracts

Macquarie's New Library

Maxine BrodieMacquarie University Librarian

A new campus library, the likes of which has never been seen before in the Australian higher education sector, will be built at Macquarie University by 2010. The radical concept presented by the architects is of a welcoming, transparent and inspiring landmark building for the University. It represents a new generation of library design - full of dynamic, collaborative, open spaces for learning, rather than the traditional notion of a library as a quiet, storage facility for printed materials.

LAMS was launched for the entire NTDEET educational community in 2007.
Following a successful trial with students from year 2 to year 9 (LAMS 1.0.2) in
2006 NT has since made this available for all NT schools.
LAMS 2.0 has now been centrally installed. Developmental work by the LAMS
Community has been completed and integrated with the NT user authentication
system which replicates on an ‘as needs’ basis. This release will see NT as one
of the largest single instances of LAMS in one centrally managed environment and
will hopefully provide options for DEET users for easy access to online and
blended learning.

The Teacher Education Program at Macquarie University is trialling the use of Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) software as a scaffold for lesson design with pre-service teachers. Throughout the process of authoring a sequence, these students are required to think about all aspects of their lessons in detail and the software enables them to experience the lesson themselves via a Preview mode before using it in the classroom.

The graphic interface also allows students and their tutors to visualise lessons providing an instant “picture” of the lesson and its content with a clarity not available in traditional written lesson plans. In addition, LAMS creates lessons that are not simply “documentation” but fully operational lessons in a standardised template of activities that can easily be modified for future re-use.

The School of Medicine at the University of Western Sydney is currently designing curriculum for years three to five of a new undergraduate medical degree. Part of the student workload is expected to be online in the form of nine ‘Scientific Stream Modules’, which will be made available from 2009. Learning design templates, designed in LAMS, are being used in to aid content experts who are otherwise unfamiliar with eLearning, to insert their content straight into an online learning environment. The templates are also designed to show them the range and extent of online activities that are available through LAMS. The first modules are now starting to take shape, and feedback from content experts has been very positive. The templates have been used as a starting point and as inspiration for the module design, but are not restricting new ideas.

Using a Shibboleth Trust Federation to create “Joint Lessons” with LAMS

James Dalziel and Ernie Ghiglione
MELCOE, Australia

A Trust Federation is a combination of technology and policy infrastructure that allows different organisations to collaborate in a secure and distributed way. Shibboleth is the world’s leading Trust Federation technology for the education and research sector, and Shibboleth Trust Federations are being rolled out in Australia (Australian Access Federation), New Zealand, UK, USA and many other countries. With support from the New Zealand Ministry of Education, LAMS has been adapted to run within a Shibboleth Trust Federation. Teachers at different educational institutions who are part of a federation can create “Joint Lessons” in LAMS, where a teacher hosts a sequence that can be joined by teachers and students from other selected lessons in the federation. The result is the creation of a “Joint Lesson” made up of students (and teachers) from two or more different educational institutions, potentially in different cities, states or countries. Joint Lessons are created at the level of a LAMS sequence, rather than at a whole course/unit level, which allows a single course/unit to host different Joint Lessons with different organisations if desired. Once LAMS servers join a Trust Federation, teachers can create their own Joint Lessons immediately without requiring assistance from technical staff, hence empowering teachers and students to easily collaborate across organisational boundaries in a secure way.

The use of a collaborative authoring system is one of a few exemplary ways to help educators, educational designers, and institutions rethink their pedagogical approaches within the learning environment. It is envisaged that unique uses of synchronous chat, polling, student feedback, e-portfolios and online questions and answers will help engage the new generation of learners. Our focus is on modelling interactive resources and learning activities within the learning design that engage and assist students to make direct applications of professional knowledge to professional practice. “Learning activities are the tasks and exercises which assist students in making meaning from the content of a course. They are the vehicles through which learning occurs”(ACU National Online Pedagogical Principles. 1.3,). This paper discusses the implementation and formative evaluation of the use of the Learning Activity Management System as a cognitive tool for student reflective thinking within the context of teacher education.

LAMS has become an integral part of many aspects of Macquarie ICT Innovation Centre in developing, implementing and evaluating innovative ways of enhancing learning through the application of dynamic and emerging information and communication technologies.

This year, the Centre has been collaborating with the Centre for Learning Innovation on a project called Engaging Pedagogy. This project has been developed to support the work of school leaders and teachers in addressing the quality of ICT teaching and learning in NSW public schools.

Teachers in the project schools have been expected to integrate three technologies in their design of learning experiences for students: digital resources from TaLe, interactive whiteboards and the collaborative tools of LAMS. This tool set has been utilized to promote high levels of intellectual engagement, through a quality learning environment where the pedagogy requires the technology for its outcomes and makes explicit to students the significance of their work.

This presentation will explore the scope as well as the findings of this project including the key impacts on teaching practice. Measures of success include: a focus on the teacher’s design of integrated and self managed learning activities; the nature of the discipline or KLAs and the integration of new ways of representing ideas and concepts.

LAMS Paragraph Power is an extensive LAMS sequence designed to advance literacy outcomes for middle years’ students, in particular boys and students who are falling behind with conventional literacy activities. Year 7 students in all government schools participate in the English Language and Literacy Assessment (ELLA). This universal test has highlighted a demand for online reinforcement of basic literary. LAMS Paragraph Power has been designed in response to these practical requirements and requests from schools.
The ‘LAMS Paragraph Power’ sequence was adapted from a very successful hard copy teaching unit and covers 4 basic components to effective writing – topic sentences, supporting detail sentences, punctuation and descriptive writing.

The aim of the program was to produce sequential teaching & learning based on short, sharp writing activities. The use of vivid literary stimuli from popular authors, constant reinforcement of basic rules and provision for repetition to mastery of each of the “building blocks” ensures student engagement and success.

• The origin of the program and how it was designed to improve boys literacy. Issues which affect boys and girls literacy will be mentioned and linked to features of the program
• Why the technology, LAMS and online delivery are likely to successfully engage students and improve literacy outcomes
• Reports on interviews with teachers and students who have been working on LAMS paragraph Power
• Discussion of the hypothesis and research which will be done on the use of the program in the participating schools

This presentation features a 4P approach (pedagogy, performance, promise and pragmatics) in the use of LAMS and complementary content authoring software to extend the interactive learning design and development agenda at NTU. Within that context each of the 4Ps will be addressed with respect to their influence on the development and delivery of engineering course content. Pedagogy will showcase examples of ways that we have used LAMS to incorporate active learning experiences.

Performance will highlight the reactions of both professors and learners to the LAMS active learning pedagogy and its extensibility into our synchronous delivery. Promise builds on the realisations arising from our experiences to date with this form of interactive pedagogy and performance, and suggests ideas for moving forward with LAMS as our primary learning design, content development interface. Finally, pragmatics will focus on some of the key obstacles encountered along the way to adoption of a more successful and engaging learning experience, how these obstacles were addressed, and what NTU seeks to do to extend the current affordances enabled by our adoption and integration of LAMS within our learning system.

Students in our schools carry more technology in their school bags than they have access to in the classroom. There is a growing divide between the classroom and home; where students are engaging in sophisticated social networking activities. Can concepts such as ePortfolios and Personal Learning Environments, bridge between the ‘walled gardens’ of our schools and the students’ ‘digital bedrooms’? How relevant is the concept of Learning Design and associated tools such as LAMS in this context?Is the application of Learning Design limited to formal learning contexts? Does social networking present a challenge for Learning Design models of practice?How do students perceive this information/learning divide between home and school?This presentation will discuss such issues in the context of NSW education and training.

Please note: Elizabeth will be presenting from Canada but will be available online to take questions

Conversations in instructional design circles about how best to assist teaching staff with their online learning designs often lament the lack of time and resources available to assist staff on a one-on-one basis. We Instructional Designers (and teaching staff) insist that each design is unique to the discipline, teacher, student cohort, and the knowledge and skills required by the subject outcomes. However, the resources just aren’t available or sustainable in the current environment, and we need to look hard at notions of subject/ cohort uniqueness and the need for instructional designer involvement within each step of the elearning design path. This presentation presents a resource designed to provide a tool to guide teaching staff through the elearning design process – in the form of templates for various learning designs. The development and implementation of the learning design templates project at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, will be discussed. The integration of a systemic resource provided an opportunity to explore and unpack the issues surrounding scalability, process, support requirements and the versatility and practicality of learning design templating in general.

This paper presents a beta version of a generic learning design based on analogical reasoning. The value of applying principles of analogical reasoning, informed by key literature, is explored. The need to work collaboratively, not only with field experts but also teachers themselves is discussed as well. This relationship is evidenced through the contribution of pre-service teacher participants who took part in a recent study which focused on their experiences in designing and implementing a learning design based on well researched learning strategies. Participants chose to implement their own contextualised analogical reasoning online tasks in school-based learning environments and the crucial role of the teacher to facilitate learning of target concepts is highlighted.

For most teachers, but more so for the new scheme teachers, time is the enemy. As new Teachers adapt to the world around them, the students they teach and the required content, help is available in the form of LAMS Community and the many LAMS sequences that have been shared through the Creative Commons licence. These sequences, with information indicating Stage, content and suggested time and often with a justification as to the development of the sequence, represent a starting place for a Teacher.

The sequence idea can be reworked to suit the specific needs of the students in the class, can be updated to reflect the contemporary issues and re-used according to the specifications, attribution, non-commercial, share alike as described in Creative Commons information. The sequences introduce Teachers to construction of learning that promotes interactivity, group discussion where everyone has an equal voice, research through specific websites to develop higher order thinking. This situation is modelled by the reuse of a sequence within a lecture introducing pre-service teachers to LAMS and learning design. In addition the sequences introduce Teachers to a variety of resources of quality digital content.

How do we combat plagiarism and copyright infringement in our schools and provide students with the opportunities to gain an understanding of both, reflect on their prior knowledge, before giving them the information and tools necessary to make informed decisions and choices before using the Internet. LAMS as a tool engages students in the debate about their beliefs and the common perceptions amongst their peers of an Internet that is ‘free’. Students today need to be able to process information rapidly and in real time, deciding the validity of the information and how they can best use it. Within LAMS voting gives them a voice and discussion allows them to further elaborate on the reasons for their decision in the vote. Scaffolding their research allows students to comprehend the fact that in the ‘cut and paste’ environment of the Internet there are ethical and social issues with copyright and plagiarism.

The purpose of this study was to examine the problems that learners faced while dealing with instructor-related issues when taking on-line courses. In this study, fifteen graduate students enrolled in 5 on-line graduate courses using course management software. The findings showed that lack of feedback from the instructors, their unfamiliarity with the teaching tools, and poor organization of course materials were the three major problems hindering learners’ on-line learning experiences.

LearnSpire is the learning framework developed at the TAFE NSW Community Services, Health, Tourism and Recreation Curriculum Centre out of the project “Designing resources and support materials for our future”, as part of the 2005 NSW Quality Improvement Projects Scheme.

The learning framework works around seven dimensions:

Previewing

Defining

Connecting

Applying

Journaling

Checking your progress

Self-checking.

Each dimension with its associated design elements offers a specific way of enhancing learning and boosting retention of knowledge and application of skill in learners.

Learner benefits from learning framework:

Provides a ready-made personal outline for connecting important ideas and building references a learner will need to deepen their understanding of the material to be learned.

Acknowledges each learner’s individual context.

Encourages active participation of learners.

Encourages learners to articulate to themselves and their peers what they are learning.

Encourages learners to be self-critical and questioning of assumptions.

Supportive of learners.

Provides multiple pathways for a learner to move through a resource or lesson.

Uses of learning framework:

Use as a template for developing learning resource within – the terminology and headings guide the learning.

Use as a construct for writers to develop resources around – the thinking underpins design.

When developing Training Package resources the learning framework offers the ability for validation against the content, activities, and exercise (checking your progress).

What does e-learning and Web 2.0 really mean for school libraries? As we create conversations, connections and a Web 2.0 e-learning community we are opening the door to a better library future - one that embraces the digital identity of our students and their multi-modal minds. The future of our school library and information services has never been so exciting - because now we are able to facilitate learning through knowledge construction, distribution and recombination in ways never possible before Web 2.0. Using the power of technology we are embracing creativity, technology, literacy, and multimedia to fit the requirements of 21st century learning.

Towards a comprehensive framework for ICT teachers professional development in Europe: possibilities and limitations

Juana M. Sancho Gil and
Fernando Hernández
University of Barcelona

U-LEARN (http://ulearn.itd.cnr.it/) a virtual lifelong learning centre for European teachers on ICT in education, was a European granted project aimed to designing and developing a virtual European "centre of excellence" for lifelong teacher training, in order to build a more stable and efficient educational system.

More specifically, the main aims of the project were to:

- analyse the educational context in each country, in order to negotiate a common “model” for the U-LEARN Centre;
- define a common syllabus of ICT skills in education;
- design and run training actions based on the syllabus;
- identify and design tools for collaboration, accessing information, sharing knowledge and materials;
- developing and testing the efficacy of the U-LEARN Centre across Europe;
- identifying transferability methods and strategies for the U-LEARN Centre

This presentation shares the research process and findings involving students and teachers in two primary schools in Christchurch, New Zealand. The project undertook to research the use of the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) as an online learning environment to teach a collaborative unit of work on Vandalism.

There has been much research on collaborative learning at various levels of the school sector (e.g., Brown & Thomson, 2000; Holloway, 2003; Holmes, 2003; Holzer, 2004; Lourdusamy, Myint, & Sipusic, 2003; Peel & Shortland, 2004; Whatley & Bell, 2003). However the use of online environments for collaborative work is a new and largely under-researched area for primary school teachers as most studies in this are have involved the secondary or tertiary sector (Chih-Hsiung & Correy, 2003; Hakkinen, 2003; Hron & Friedrich, 2003; Neo, 2003).This project helps to address this gap in the research literature.

Research support was provided to encourage the participating teachers to develop as critical professionals reflecting on their practice using, action-research. In particular the project had teachers use a hybrid model to deliver part of their classroom teaching and learning programme and reflect on this process (Collison et al. 2000; Draves 2002; Ko & Rossen 2001).

At the completion of this project the unit and sequences were modified and offered again across classes in two learning centres. The project was funded through The New Zealand Council of Educational Research, Teaching and Learning Research Initiative.

The NSW Rural & Distance Education unit (R&DE) has been using LAMS along with other collaborative learning tools as part of a blended learning trial with distance education and small cohort schools to increase student and staff collaborations. The ability to establish a stronger relationship between a teacher and students by providing authentic tasks with increased interaction through collaborative technologies such as LAMS is a positive educational outcome.

This presentation will outline the R&DE context, the objectives of the trial, implementation strategies and preliminary feedback from schools.

Heather Cooper
University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia

This presentation reports on using the LAMS learning design system to develop an Information Literacy module for 2nd year education students at Macquarie University. The learning design will be outlined and discussed, and examples and analysis of student feedback presented. This experience opened our eyes to new possibilities for Information Literacy and its application in e-learning.

Martin Weller
Institute of Educational Technology,
The Open University, United Kingdom

Please note: Martin will be presenting from the UK but will be available online to take questions

While there is much interest in the world of web 2.0 in higher education, particularly how social networks can be used to facilitate learning communities and how user generated content can be part of the educational experience, there are also a number of cultural differences between the two worlds. Perhaps the most significant of these is the need to assure quality and provide a structured approach to learning in higher education compared with the miscellaneous approach of web 2.0. This paper will look at some of these differences and show how learning design fits in currently, and how it might be used as a means of both providing the personalisation and user control seen in web 2.0 and the scaffolding and guidance required of education.

The aim of this paper is to help learners develop algorithmic thinking skill to solve a problem using LAMS and to draw their interest in learning through various learning activities to solve it. Until now, when we are using the existing LMS to design teaching contents, it takes a lot of time and requires a complicated process. LAMS which is a new open learning activity management system, however, has the advantages of easy teaching contents' design and implementation and of an offer of sequential learning under various learning environments.

In this paper, we adopt sorting algorithms which has been used as a tool for developing logical thinking of learners. Even though there are various sorting methods, we consider only three sorting algorithms, selection sort, bubble sort and insertion sort, and design level-based teaching contents for these sorting methods based on LAMS considering learners' individual difference

The designed contents were applied to elementary school students' learning and a questionnaire survey was conducted. They showed positive responses, on the one hand, in their satisfaction with learning under the new LAMS environment, understanding of unfamiliar educational contents, and their demands for the system providing serial learning in web education and technical contents of computer education. On the other hand, they hoped that various kinds of learning would be provided including not only data sorting but also technical contents related to computer.

For further study, it is necessary to revise and supplement conceptual principals or contents of computer education in elementary and junior high schools. It is also expected to further study LAMS in its infancy and endeavor to make it a popular learning management system.

The LAMS Overview presentation introduces the LAMS software and some of its key features. In the presentation you will be treated to a live demonstration of the LAMS software as well as how it integrates with a Learning Management System. The content of this presentation will target an audience that is new to LAMS and its concepts.